The UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 calls for achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. However, a recent review notes insufficient progress on structural issues at the root of gender inequality.1 For this reason, Saidi Kapiga and colleagues’ study,2 reported in The Lancet Global Health, marks an important contribution because of its focus on advancing current understanding on preventing intimate partner violence against women. Kapiga and colleagues did a randomised controlled trial in north-western Tanzania of a social empowerment programme for women participants. This intervention, called MAISHA, provided women with a participatory gender training curriculum aiming to develop their skills in preventing intimate partner violence and mitigating associated negative consequences. Microfinance groups were randomly assigned to either receive the gender training curriculum (ie, the intervention arm) or ongoing microfinance group participation only (ie, the control group). Findings showed that, after 24 months, women in the intervention arm were less likely than those in the control arm to report physical or sexual intimate partner violence, express attitudes accepting of intimate partner violence, and view intimate partner violence as a private matter...
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", language="en", issn="2214-109X", doi="10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30372-9", url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(19)30372-9" }